CARLINVILLE — When a team opens with a 54-0 victory on opening night, one would be hard-pressed to find any deficiencies. But a coach always finds ways a team can improve and correct mistakes, which is what Carlinville coach Chad Easterday said after his Cavaliers opened the 2016 prep football season with a win against the Roxana Shells.

But Easterday wasn’t the only one.

Senior tailback Jacob Dixon, who led the way with 144 rushing yards and three touchdowns, said it was a case of eliminating the opening-night hype.

“We had the annual first-game jitters; every team does,” Dixon said after the game Friday. “We really overcame those really fast and really put together a good win tonight.”

A scoreless game midway through the first quarter, Dixon scored on a 12-yard run around the left side before diving inside the left pylon on 4th-and-10 and away the Cavs went.

“We started off a little sluggish,” Easterday said. “We had a few penalties and (quarterback) Adam (Walton) took a little bit to get comfortable. We knew that was going to happen, too. But I was happy to see him get his feet wet and get things going and he picked it right up in the second half.

“(Dixon) needed to get his feet wet, too. He missed a few holes early on and I think he tried to do too much. He let the game come to him and we wore on them in the second half.”

Roxana coach Pat Keith warned it might take some time before the Shells get results. With only four returning starters from a two-time playoff team, the Shells are playing younger kids, and with an ineffective offense that lost four fumbles and was intercepted once, it made for a long night against arguably the favorite to win the South Central Conference.

“We’re young. We’ve got to get to work,” Keith said. “We have only four returning starters and there’s a lot of guys making the jump from JV football to varsity football. Tonight was a learning lesson and hopefully next week, we’ll be ready to go.

“With some young guys, I knew it would be some work, but not like this. But this was part of the deal. Back to the drawing board and get ready for next week.”

Roxana managed only 29 net yards, including just one passing. And it won’t get much easier with a date at defending conference champ Pana next week.

“I think for us, you’ve got to just find some good things out of film that we did well,” Keith said. “Start with that and work from the positives to give these kids something to build from. You can’t dwell on the negatives. It won’t do them any good.”

Carlinville was plus-5 in the turnover battle, but 10 penalties for 75 yards will be something the Cavs will want to clean up heading into a Week 2 battle at Vandalia.

“We got some key turnovers, we got an onside kick early on, which changed the field position a little bit,” Easterday said. “Those things are all great things we need to carry on to next week, but we’ve also got some things to clean up with penalties.”

And after taking an early night off, Dixon will have some pent-up energy for the second game, but Carlinville was able to display some of its depth with Dylan Chism, who rushed for a score, Kyle Dixon and Josh Hinzman, who caught a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns, out of the backfield to go with its passing game.

Carlinville had 437 yards of total offense.

“We have really good depth,” Jacob Dixon said. “One person gets tired, another person pops in and they’re equally as good. We don’t really have a true second team. They’re all first-team caliber players if they were on different teams. We just have great depth throughout the program and I think that’s going to help us go far this year.”